Title: Ashore
Material: Shells, glass, Styrofoam
Size: 12 inches L x 14 inches W x 12 inches H
I aimed to create something that represents life and decay. My work explores the emphasis on a few topics surrounding sea life. The relationship between beauty and death varies metaphorically throughout my work. First, I created a large-scale clam shell out of smaller clam shells. There is a debate on whether or not shells are living things. A living mollusk will grow a shell, but it’s more of an exoskeleton than a living part of the body. The shell is not living, but the body inside the shell is living. When the organism dies, the shell is left behind. People will kill a living clam, oyster, or mussel with a 50% chance of a pearl.
Second, I created a pearl entirely made of crushed glass. The crushed glass is a symbol of decay and harm. Beach glass is considered a beautiful treasure found at the beach, but we seem to forget where it actually comes from. It comes from visitors leaving broken beer bottles on the beach, the glass being sucked into the body of water, and it becoming a part of the underwater habitat. Yes, erosion and salt water make the glass very smooth and pretty, but we forget to think about where the other glass goes. How many sea creatures ingest that glass? How harmful is this to these animals for a precious collector’s item? Same concept goes for the hunting of a pearl.
The shell is 12 inches tall, 14 inches wide, and 12 inches deep. The “pearl” is 3 inches by 3 inches. This work is made entirely out of organic/natural products; shells, glass, and Styrofoam.
Comment by Linda Weintraub
The artwork you submitted is beautifully crafted and visually appealing. Furthermore, your choice of materials and theme introduce four fascinating examples of the range of tempos and durations of change that take place in our environment. Two of the changes you include involve decomposition, but the other two present a degradation process that is not a form of decomposition and are, therefore, not relevant to the Beyond Death project. I will explain:
Organisms that create shells die. They decompose quickly. The fact that some of these organisms die naturally; while others are killed by people seeking pearls is true. However, the causes of death are not relevant to this art project. Beyond Death focuses on the afterlife of the physical organism, not how it died.
Shells decompose slowly over a long period of time. You can add shells to your garden bed or compost pile, but they will break down slowly.
Glass introduces a third rate of change. It is a stable material that resists dismantling even more than a shell. It can take a glass bottle one million years to break down in the environment. Finally, glass is not an organic material; it is mineral. A change in the chemistry of a substance is needed for decomposition to occur. Crushed glass and polished glass, do not convey decay because their chemistry does not change. They remain glass.
Styrofoam is made out of styrene which is a petroleum-based product. It does not become compost when it breaks down.
Beyond Death artworks incorporate the actual material transformations. It does not ‘represent’. It does not present life and death or beauty and decay ‘metaphorically’ or ‘symbolically’. Can you think of a way to incorporate actual material transformation in this artwork?
For example, you could combine it with a fish-based fertilizer that incorporates such organic materials as discarded fish bones, fish parts, blood meal, fish oil, and fish meal and mix them with saw dust to create fish compost. It is super fertile and will support all kinds of plant growth. You might create a garden bed in which these ingredients of soil, along with real fish shells, are visible.